This week the annual Queensland Budget was tabled. Among the suite of documents, there is a series described as Service Delivery Statements for each Department – and they make for some interesting reading as they flag the highlights and focus for the year ahead.

In issues related to flood risk management, the Department of, Local Government and Planning document describes issues around flooding and resilience. These responsibilities are linked to the Queensland Reconstruction Authority and include:

refreshing the Queensland Disaster Resilience Strategy and lead a whole-of-government approach to disaster recovery, resilience and mitigation policy

leading ongoing development of Queensland’s flood risk management policy and work with local governments to implement recommendations of the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry and the 2015 Flood Warning Gauge Network Review

These two points do flag a direction of achieving a whole of government approach to flood risk management. If indeed that can be achieved, it will be a welcomed approach by many Local Governments, other agencies, NGOs and business looking for a lead and consistent approach across the State.

Also of interest was that a description of resilience has been introduced as a Service Standard. This is a new service standard for the 2016 -17 period. The Queensland Resilience Index (QRI) has been designed to measure changes in the level of resilience shown by Queenslanders over time. The QRI uses a random representative sample of 800 Queenslanders with approximately 50% drawn from the south-east corner and 50% from other regions in line with population distribution. The resilience index was bench-marked at 100 in 2013-14 and results of 104 were recorded in 2015-16. The target is to increase the level of resilience by 5% year on year. So as a measure – it is very much looking at the individual and as details become available we will share that further. The interesting question is how might this match with the initiatives that can be associated with building resilience and/or how much is based on the existing cohesion and initiatives of a local community?